New SD Card not booting into homebrew menu or atmosphere/hekate using pegascape and caffeine

[Snoir]

Hello everyone,

I have an old ipatched Switch running firmware 4.1. I used to use a Lexar XC-HC 256 GB SD card, which worked fine, until it suddenly died. This week, I bought a new SD card (SanDisk Ultra 512 GB XC-HC), but now I can't boot into the Homebrew Menu or CFW using Caffeine.


The new SD card is formatted as FAT32. I've tried restoring a backup from a month ago, and I also downloaded fresh copies of last update of Atmosphere, Hekate, and new sigpatches, but nothing works. I’ve also tried using different pegascape DNS addresses, including the new public ones (141.148.246.60 and 162.252.81.54), and even tried self-hosting pegascape. No matter what I do, I keep getting the same errors.


When I launch Caffeine and tap the power button, nothing happens, I just stay in the normal SysNAND. When I try to open the Homebrew Menu, it says "success," but when I open the photo album, I only get a white screen.


It seems like the problem might be the new SD card. I checked in the settings and Switch recognized the SD, and I think pegascape is working, but something isn’t right.


Do you have any ideas on what I can try next?

 

[einhuman197]

Hello everyone,

I have an old ipatched Switch running firmware 4.1. I used to use a Lexar XC-HC 256 GB SD card, which worked fine, until it suddenly died. This week, I bought a new SD card (SanDisk Ultra 512 GB XC-HC), but now I can't boot into the Homebrew Menu or CFW using Caffeine.


The new SD card is formatted as FAT32. I've tried restoring a backup from a month ago, and I also downloaded fresh copies of last update of Atmosphere, Hekate, and new sigpatches, but nothing works. I’ve also tried using different pegascape DNS addresses, including the new public ones (141.148.246.60 and 162.252.81.54), and even tried self-hosting pegascape. No matter what I do, I keep getting the same errors.


When I launch Caffeine and tap the power button, nothing happens, I just stay in the normal SysNAND. When I try to open the Homebrew Menu, it says "success," but when I open the photo album, I only get a white screen.


It seems like the problem might be the new SD card. I checked in the settings and Switch recognized the SD, and I think pegascape is working, but something isn’t right.


Do you have any ideas on what I can try next?

Does your issue still persist? If yes, I compiled this archive for a kind stranger who needed help with a shelved unmodded 4.1.0 Switch (YES THIS APPARENTLY EXISTS???) and it worked for them. It includes all the relevant PegaScape payloads including a compatible hbmenu build from 2019 (the newer hbmenu builds don't run with PegaScape). You can use that to fix your PegaScape setup and confirm it's working by launching hbmenu. To setup atmosphere and hekate after a successful hbmenu PegaScape launch, drag and drop all the files from the latest hekate + atmosphere archives on the microSD root, move the hekate ctaer .bin into /atmosphere and rename it to reboot_payload.bin. replace existing files if needed. Also, make sure to Force Powercycle your Switch (Press Power Button for 30s and start after that) before any of this. Sometimes the exploit freezes and produces weird results.



Keep me posted, good luck!

 

[vincent1333]

Does your issue still persist? If yes, I compiled this archive for a kind stranger who needed help with a shelved unmodded 4.1.0 Switch (YES THIS APPARENTLY EXISTS???) and it worked for them. It includes all the relevant PegaScape payloads including a compatible hbmenu build from 2019 (the newer hbmenu builds don't run with PegaScape). You can use that to fix your PegaScape setup and confirm it's working by launching hbmenu. To setup atmosphere and hekate after a successful hbmenu PegaScape launch, drag and drop all the files from the latest hekate + atmosphere archives on the microSD root, move the hekate ctaer .bin into /atmosphere and rename it to reboot_payload.bin. replace existing files if needed. Also, make sure to Force Powercycle your Switch (Press Power Button for 30s and start after that) before any of this. Sometimes the exploit freezes and produces weird results.



Keep me posted, good luck!

Hello, I had the same problem and did what you said, I was able to enter Hekate, but when I try to enter the emunand, it gives me an error, could you tell me how to fix it?, please

 

[eskinner3742]

Hello, I had the same problem and did what you said, I was able to enter Hekate, but when I try to enter the emunand, it gives me an error, could you tell me how to fix it?, please

So I also followed @einhuman197 advice and was able to successfully load into hekate and hit this error when launching. Hekate can't find the package3 file in the /atmosphere folder on your sd card. Copying over the files from the latest atmosphere should fix that if your emuNAND has been updated to a recent version on HOS.

I also ran into an issue that the latest version of atmosphere would not boot my newly created 4.0.1 emuNAND and I had to use an older release. Atmosphere 0.10.0 prerelease and hekate 5.1.0 iirc plus the files from @einhuman197 was what worked to boot emuNAND on 4.0.1. I had to edit a proper entry in /bootloader/hekate_ipl.ini by adding:

[CFW (EMUMMC)]
fss0=atmosphere/fusee-secondary.bin
emummcforce=1

This was necessary to get hekate to boot atmosphere 0.10.0. Once booted, I used ChoidujourNX to update the emuNAND to 20.5.0, then replaced everything on the SD card with the latest atmosphere and hekate making sure to delete all the pervious atmosphere folders and changing the entry in /bootloader/hekate_ipl.ini to

[CFW (EMUMMC)]
pkg3=atmosphere/package3
emummcforce=1

then I could launch the updated emuNAND properly